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We still don't know who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed in Thailand east of Ukraine on Thursday. There is no concrete evidence yet, but speculation points to rebels who support Russia being active in the region in the past few months.
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It's not hard to see why: after all, they are anti-government rebels who have attacked Ukrainian government forces. But it is more than that. The rebels shot down the first planes, though they were all military planes. And recently, a Ukrainian military plane in the area was shot down by a missile while it was flying at high altitude, suggesting that, like MH17, whoever shot them down had advanced military technology.
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Villagers look at the wreckage of a Ukrainian military plane that was shot down in eastern Ukraine on Monday. Yesterday (Dominic Faget/AFP/Getty Images)
Four Ukrainian military aircraft have been shot down since last June. Two incidents appear almost certainly to have been by insurgents, apparently able and willing to shoot down aircraft. But the other two were shot down at the same altitude as flight MH17 and are still unclear. Who is responsible?
On June 6, rebels shot down a Ukrainian Air Force Antonov AN-30 spy plane, a military ship with two propellers. Medium, which is usually produced in Russia. This is near Slavyansk in the eastern part of Ukraine. Ten days later, on June 16, rebels shot down a Ukrainian Air Force Il-76 transport plane, killing 49 people on board. The Il-76 is larger than the AN-30 and has four engines, the size of the Boeing 777 that crashed on Thursday.
There is one "but" that separates these two cases from MH17, though - the AN-30 and ILl-6 were shot down by MANPADS, which stands for man-portable air defense systems, small missiles that you can launch on yourself. you take The shoulder can only shoot up to an altitude of about 11,500 feet, but MH17 flew at an altitude of 33,000 feet. That is, outside of shoulder fired MANPADS missiles.
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Because of this, initially, people wondered if the rebels had the capability to shoot down a high-flying passenger plane like MH17. But on Monday, July 14, another incident occurred, which did not go unnoticed at the time. That day, in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian Antonov AN-26 military transport plane was shot down by a missile. While flying over eastern Ukraine - at an altitude of 21,000 feet. It is beyond the scope of shoulder-fire systems such as MANPADS.
The Ukrainian government did not blame ragtag separatist rebels for Monday's shooting, however: it suggested the missiles may have been fired from Russia, which shares a border with eastern Ukraine. However, Ukrainian rebels have been convinced, and Ukraine has yet to show evidence that it is related to the shooting of Russian troops.
The BBC's David Stern wrote at the time that "the allegation that the Russian military shot down a Ukrainian cargo plane could be a game changer." " However, Stern admitted, "for the Ukrainians not to respond would raise suspicions that their accusations are false - or show that the Ukrainian military is completely powerless."
Ukraine's lack of a strong response or presentation of evidence implicating Russia may explain why so little attention has been paid to Monday's shooting. On the one hand, Russia has tens of thousands of troops — as many as 12,000 — massed along its border with eastern Ukraine, and Moscow has supported rebels in eastern Ukraine. On the other hand, firing a missile at a Ukrainian plane across the border would be a most provocative movement, even to Russia.
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Then, on Wednesday, a Ukrainian Sukhoi SU-25 fighter jet was shot down in eastern Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government gave no reason to blame Russia. Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian government official, said: "A Russian armed aircraft fired a missile at the aircraft. A Su-25 of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which is operating over the territory of Ukraine.
The first few planes shot down in eastern Ukraine were shot down at low altitude, and appeared to be insurgents carrying MANPADS. While sad, this is not shocking: Eastern Ukraine is a huge open conflict zone, rebels are firing on every Ukrainian military target they can find, and MANPADS are sufficient grounds for ragtag irregulars like the eastern Ukrainian rebels.
But the technology to bring down high-altitude aircraft like MH17 or the Ukrainian military plane that was shot down at high altitude within weeks is much more complicated. Analysts say the most likely weapon is the Buk ballistic missile system, generally speaking, made in Russia but still used by the Ukrainian military. The Buk system has a range of about 50,000 feet, but is more sophisticated than shoulder-fired missiles. That's why U.S. officials say they believe the plane may have been shot down by the SA-11 system, the American designation for Buk.
According to the US Embassy in Kyiv, the Buk surface-to-air missile system is "a sophisticated system, consisting of both a radar and a command vehicle." In other words, this isn't a shoulder-fired missile in the style of a ragtag militia—it's a system that requires a lot of people with real training and resources to coordinate it into a very complex system of vehicles. Typically, three vehicles would be needed to launch a book – the launcher itself, a command vehicle and a radar vehicle – although some analysts say it's possible for a single vehicle to operate the launcher on its own.
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Despite a week or two of Russian military training, a Ukrainian volunteer rebel group marches into this system and it's very difficult to know how to use it properly.
It is true that the Ukrainian rebels appear to have such a system, which could be seized from the Ukrainian military. Rebels have previously sued the Buk system, according to a June 29 report with sources in the rebel Donetsk People's Republic news agency. But that doesn't mean they know how to use it.
All of this suggests that whoever shot down the other aircraft this week, at least one of which was flying at altitudes beyond the range of MANPADS, was either an official military force or was heavily trained by the official surface-to-surface military. Air Missile Systems.
That significantly narrows the list of suspects. Perhaps it was the trained Ukrainian military that turned to the rebels. Perhaps it is Ukrainian rebels who have received extensive Russian training on the Buk system, which raises the question of why Russia is providing this training and what it means for Moscow's involvement in the attack. Or maybe the Ukrainian government was right about the first two attacks coming from an official Russian military or air force base.
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Under these likely circumstances, it seems likely that whoever shot down MH17 may have thought they shot down another Ukrainian military aircraft, not knowing it was a civilian aircraft. And there is no concrete evidence to show that Ukrainian rebels have been tricked, Ukrainian rebel grenades are backed by Russia, the Russian military itself or others. However, it is difficult to imagine how the investigation into the downing of MH17 will not end with a significant escalation of the crisis in Ukraine, which was critical before Thursday's tragedy.
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